Announcements

June 9, 2014

The class is over! Have a great summer!

NOTE: You must submit a hard copy of your final paper by 4pm on June 9. (There is a dropbox outside Gates 128.)

There will be no bonus lecture as not enough students signed up. On June 9, Yoav will give a bonus lecture on combinatorial auctions at 2:15pm.
If you are interested in coming, please email Eric. If 15 people or more respond, it's on.

June 6, 2014

Homework 4 has been graded and solutions are posted.

May 30, 2014

We posted on the forum some notes on definition of dictatorship and IIA.
Please check these notes before you submit your HW4 solution.

Also, in Q4 of HW4, you can use Arrow's theorem, but if you are disproving a statement, you must give us a counter-example (otherwise, you will only get a partial credit).

May 28, 2014

On June 2 (last lecture), Haden and Eric will give short presentations on some GT research relevant to the course.

On June 9, Yoav will give a bonus lecture on combinatorial auctions at 2:15pm.
If you are interested in coming, please email Eric. If 15 people or more respond, it's on.
(PS -- I attended it when I took this class, and it would be worth your time! -- Haden.)

May 27, 2014

Haden's last office hours will be on Friday (May 30) from 2:30pm to 4:30pm at Gates 128. (It's a different time than the usual one due to a robotics seminar at Gates.)

If your proposal was not approved, please follow up with Yoav directly.

May 25, 2014

We added some clarifications to HW4 Q3 and Q4-b. Please check the updated version here.

May 23, 2014

If you have not picked up your midterm yet, you can pick it up during the following hours:

May 30 (1pm-3pm) (Haden's office hours)

June 2 (in-class -- this is our last class)

June 2 (4pm - 6pm) (Eric's office hours)

After 6pm, June 2, we will place all midterms in a dropbox outside Gates 128.
(If you want us to keep it in our office, just email us.)

Note that we will NOT accept any re-grade requests on HW/midterm after June 2 6pm.

Also note that there will be no re-grade of HW4 submissions due to the course schedule.

There is no class on May 26.

May 19, 2014

Final Paper: See here for infomration. We will make an official announcement after the midterm.

Midterm has been graded (stats available on the forum). You can check your grades here.

Midterm coverage has been finalized. See the midterm section for details.

Homework 4 is released. Due date is May 27, but we will grant a 1-week extension with no penalty (if submitted before 4pm June 3).

May 5-9, 2014

Haden and Eric will be out of town between May 3 - May 10 (and therefore no office hours).

Our third TA (Sathish) will hold special office hours on May 6th during 12pm-2pm. Location: Basement of Huang building. Email Sathish about the exact location if you can't find him.

May 3, 2014

A clarification on Q2 of HW 3: 'Latency' has the same meaning as 'Cost' defined in the book, and this should cause no ambiguity.

You need to justify your answers for Q2 and Q3 in HW 3. We updated the problem statement to reflect this.

May 2, 2014

We finished grading homework 2. Solutions can be found under the 'Important Dates' section.

Here's some example problems on Selfish routing (from last years recitation).[ PDF ]
The slides are self-explanatory.
Disclaimer: The slides may contain a typo or error, so please report on the discussion forum if you find any.

Apr 29, 2014

Homework 3 is released.

Here is a practice problem on Bayesian Games (PDF) from previous years homework. (Solutions)
Since we do not have homework problems on Bayesian Games this year, use this as an exercise problem in preparation for midterm. We will upload a solution to this later, but feel free to discuss on the forum.

Apr 15, 2014

Homework 2 is released.

Homework 1 solutions can be found under "Important Dates" section.
Feel free to discuss and comment on solutions of HW1.

Homework 1 has been graded. You can pick it up from the box outside Gates 128.

Apr 14, 2014

Office Hours: As announced in class today, Haden will hold office hours on Fridays 1pm-3pm starting this week.

A clarification on the wording of Q4-(b) and (c): The minmax values are defined as the (expected) payoff if the player best-responds to the minmax strategy of the other player against her (see Definition 3.4.2.). In case this was not clear, we updated our wording in the problem set.

Apr 12, 2014

Minor changes to the coverage of reading material:
For Week 3, we are removing sub-sections 5.2.3 and 5.2.4 from the reading list; we noted this in the original syllabus, but we are just making it more explicit.
For Week 4, there is one video ("Learning in Repeated Games") that covers Ch 7.2 of the book.
Note that we do not have lecture videos for Week 6.
For Week 7, we are making Ch 9.5 optional.
For Week 9, we are making Ch 10.4.7 and 10.5 optional.All these changes have been reflected into the schedule at the bottom of this page.

Apr 10, 2014

If you visit the edX Course Info, you can now download "All Lecture Slides" by clicking on the link under "Course Handouts" (on the right panel).

Apr 9, 2014

In Week 2 material, there are two lecture videos on "Maxmin Strategies", one Basic and one Advanced.
They are essentially the same except the Basic one skips a few slides, and thus we are making the Basic one optional.
The edX Courseware has been updated accordingly.

Apr 7, 2014

In Homework 1: Assume that epsilon is positive in Question 1-(g). This should be clear from the context. We have updated the pdf file as well.

We have changed the coverage of textbook material for week 1 and week 2.
For week 1, we have removed 3.3.4 (it is optional now).
For week 2, we added 4.1 and 4.2.1. See the bottom of this page for the updated schedule.

We are aware that some lecture videos of Week 2 through Week 10 do not appear. The edX tech team is currently fixing it, and the videos will be ready soon. As of 2:30pm Apr 5, all videos sohuld be available on the edX platform (except for Week 6 which has no lecture videos). If you do not see a video for any sub-section, please let us know by posting on the forum which week and which sub-section is missing.

Apr 1, 2014

Homework 1 has been released!

Haden's first office hours on April 9 will run from 1pm-3pm (It's re-scheduled due to a seminar that starts at 3pm.)

Mar 31, 2014

The syllabus has been updated. You can now watch videos on edX (see below).

We have announcned a schedule for homework assignments.

A tentative coverage of midterm is announced. We will finalize it a week prior to the exam date.

The Flipped Classroom

We will run a flipped classroom: You are responsible for watching video lectures and reading the textbook on your own.
When we meet on Mondays, the first half of the class will consist of reviewing the main concepts (that you are supposed to have learned), and invite your questions and discussion; occasionally we may have an invited guest speaker. For the second half of the class, the TAs will take over and do some recitation (for example, solving an exercise problem and answering questions related to homework).

You should register for the course on edX here:
https://class.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/CS224M/Spring2014/about.
You are advised to follow our suggested schedule (see the bottom of this page), but you are welcome to watch videos ahead of our schedule.
We will collect questions in advance from you via the form here: http://goo.gl/U3Ahx5.
You can also view the questions asked by other students (to avoid duplicate questions):
http://goo.gl/9iNOJo.
You can ask any questions through the form, and we will try to address them when we meet on Mondays.

Time and Location

Mondays 2:15-4:05pm in 420-041 (Jordan Hall)

Textbook

All lecture slides are available on edX (see below). Additional required reading material will be the textbook by Professor Shoham, co-authored with Kevin Leyton-Brown: Multiagent Systems: Algorithmic, Game-Theoretic, and Logical Foundations (Cambridge University Press, 2009). A slightly rough version is available
here.

Quizzes and Lab Exercises

Some lectures will have short quizzes which will help you understand the material. They are intended to make sure you understand the basic definitions, but don't call for the same level of thinking as the problem sets or the midterm. We encourage you to take all quizzes, but they will not count towards your grade.

You will have the opportunity to participate in some periodic online 'lab exercises' which will allow you to play some of the games that we discuss in the lectures. Links to specific games will be provided at the end of some lecture videos. Like the quizzes, these will not be graded. We will usually ask you to complete these before the corresponding material is covered in lecture, so that you have a chance to experience some of the games before we provide a formal game theoretic analysis of them.

Grading Policies

We will have 4 homework assignments and in-class midterm on 5/19 Monday (tentative).
We will not grade based on attendance.

Homework = 50% | Midterm = 50% | Final Paper* (see below)

We will only accept hard-copies (no scanned copy or email) for homework solutions.
Homework solutions are due by Tuesdays 4pm at Gates 128 (there will be a box). NO late submissions are allowed as we will release the solution at the deadline.
While we do our best to make questions unambiguous, some questions may still remain unclear.
Please ask on the Discussion forum on edX if you are confused.

(*) Your Final Paper is graded on the A/B/C basis, which could change your letter grade up to a full grade up or down.
Roughly speaking, getting an A on your final paper could increase your final letter grade up to a full grade (analogous for a C).

LP formulations discussed in the book. (We will not ask you to formulate LP problems, for instance.)

Chapter 6.1.3 (automata).

Chapter 6.2.3 (computing equilibria in stochastic games).

Chapter 7.5, 7.6, and 7.7.

Open book policy: Open-book and open-note (including your laptops and tablet devices that may have your notes and/or e-book). Lecture slides and notes (from other schools) that you found online can be used as well. However, please do NOT access the Internet during the midterm (including, but not limited to, chatting on-line, searching on-line, etc.). That will be a violation of the honor code.

Use of software: You are NOT allowed to use software or solvers (such as Matlab, Mathematica, CVX, etc.) other than basic calculators and e-book reader.

Honor Code

We encourage students to form study groups and discuss the lecture videos (including in-video questions). We also encourage you to get together with friends to watch the videos together as a group. However, the answers that you submit for the problem sets and midterm should be your own work; students are encouraged to discuss concepts and problems, but are NOT allowed to share their answers to problem sets and midterm. We ask that you do not share your solutions to any of the problem sets and midterm with any other students. This includes any sort of sharing, whether face-to-face, by email, uploading onto public sites, etc. Doing so will drastically detract from the learning experience of your fellow students, and any attempt to do so will be considered a clear honor code violation.

Readings: Ch 5 (5.2.3 and 5.2.4 are optional).
NOTE: Sequence form and sequential equilibrium will be good to know, but will not appear in the homework or exam. Ch 6.5 is optional (but we recommend you read it as it contains intereting examples).